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Extending a Hardware RAID 1 Windows Boot Partition

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by sgtpappy

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I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 Server running Windows Server 2003. The hard drives are setup in a hardware RAID 1 configuration and are partitioned as follows. Partition C: 12GB and Partion D: is 22GB. This is how it came from Dell. I am quickly running out of room on the c partion and would like to extend the partition. The mirrored disks are basic disks and I was wondering if converting them to dynamic then extending the c partition to use all available space on the physical drive will work?

My concern is what effect will converting to dynamic disks have on the hardware RAID 1 configuration? Has anyone tried this before? I successfully completed something similar on another server except the server was using software RAID 1 and the disks were already dynamic disks. Any insight on this would greatly be appreciated.

5 replies

by scott_heath

As long as there is free physical disk space you should be able to extend the partition. I suggest you image the partitions with Ghost first, but at the very least back evrrything up.

by sgtpappy

I found out that the disk can be converted to dynamic with no problem, but once converted it can't be extended because it began life as a "basic" disk. This is a limitation when converting disks that contain the Operating System from basic to dynamic.

Thank you for the input on using Ghost but I prefer not to go and buy a piece of software I only really need once.

I did figure out how to solve this problem though.

I bought a 3rd hard drive that is exactly the same size and speed as the two mirrored drives. Next I unmirrored the two original drives and removed drive 0 from the server and set it aside. This allowed me to make sure I had a fall back plan incase things didn't work out during any stage of this rebuild.

Next, I installed the new hard drive in the empty drive 0 slot and booted from the Dell Open Manage CD. I went through the process of recreating the server from the ground up.

I partitioned the hard drive space to use the whole physical drive, recreated the mirror, reinstalled the OS, installed all service packs and updates then restored the original server from backup.

This process worked flawlessly and only took a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon.

I now have a healthy and happy server which makes me happy and does wonders for my health. The $159.33 I spent on the third hard drive will be used as a spare in case one of the mirrored drives ever fails or I can use it as my secret hiding place.

by power zhu

You can convert the basic disk to dyanmic in disk management, though the disk in on RAID array. But there is a problem, after you convert to dynamic disk, the system volume still cannot be expanded, so your problem still cannot be solved.

In fact, you can use other third party software to resize the partitions, make D smaller and expand C using the unallocated space.
This article may be helpful http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/partition-raid-windows-server.htm

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